


Dylan's Game Night

by WishaDream



Series: Control Shorts [17]
Category: Control (Video Game)
Genre: Other, spoilers for main game and dlcs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 12:14:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30105795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WishaDream/pseuds/WishaDream
Summary: In an effort to expand Dylan's world, Jesse invites some of her coworkers over for a game night. Probably not her best idea.
Relationships: Dylan Faden & Jesse Faden, Jesse Faden/Emily Pope
Series: Control Shorts [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2119476
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Dylan's Game Night

Jesse lined up her and Dylan’s shoes neatly along the wall of the small entryway into their apartment. Stepping back, she frowned as she considered the way it looked.

Shaking her head, she picked up the shoes as she took them back to their owner’s rooms.

The entryway led directly into the kitchen/living room/dining room. To the right of the main living area was the door to Dylan’s room. Opening it, she found him inside lying on his bed, headphones in, phone up, as he watched internet videos.

“Hey, Dylan, you gonna pick up in here?”

He didn’t respond as she stepped over a pile of clothes to get to his closet. Past the closet door she could see into his bathroom which made the spore infested bathrooms at the FBC look clean.

“Dylan?”

He let out an annoyed groan as he took out an ear bud, “What?”

“Are you going to clean up in here?” she motioned to the room.

His brow furrowed, “Why? It’s not like anyone’s coming in here.”

He put the ear bud back in before she could respond.

_He’s right. I shouldn’t ride him about this._

The kitchen had already been cleaned and the counter/bar had already been filled with bowls of snacks consisting of various chips, popcorn, candy, and trail mix.

Her room was just across the room from Dylan’s, having a short hallway leading back to it. Heading inside she noticed her room wasn’t any better than Dylan’s. She was still in the habit of leaving her clothes where she dropped them in her haste to get ready for bed, always feeling too tired to put the extra effort into tossing them into the nearby hamper.

_I’m getting closer. But I need to be better._

Taking a moment to help the clothes the rest of the way into the hamper, she then deposited her shoes in the closet. Her bathroom looked better than it had when she’d been living on her own, but she cleaned it up more as she realized someone might need to use it during the night.

Once that was clean she checked on the plants she kept on a stand near the bedroom window.

“How are you all this fine evening? We’re having company over tonight to play games. It should be fun. I hope it’s fun.”

She sprayed them with some water before giving her room one last inspection, adjusting the blankets on her bed, tossing a stray sock into the hamper, fixing the rug, then she headed out into the main living area.

A circle glass table stood in their dining area, just to the left of the hallway from her room. Though there were only two of them, Jesse had purchased the full set of chairs, four in total, in the off chance they ever had company over.

Along the back wall of the dining room stood a line of picture windows through which she could see the stretch of grass and trees that stood between their apartment building and the next. The streetlights along the nearby parking lot looked like little suns through the glass.

A bench had been placed along these windows. On them she’d placed several potted plants. In the front of that there was a three cushion couch with a coffee table between it and a loveseat. The entertainment center with TV and game systems went perpendicular to that with one final love seat situated across from it.

Like the dining table, she’d had the living room set up with the intent to host company for movie and game nights. She’d already set up the game they were planning to play, “Settlers of Catan” the six player expansion.

As she stepped across the rug to straighten the DVDs on the entertainment center her foot crunched on a popcorn kernel from her and Dylan’s movie night two days before.

After seventeen years of separation she had compiled a long list of movies she’d wanted to watch with her brother. They hadn’t even made it a quarter ways through the list, but they were slowly making progress with each movie night.

_I need to vacuum._

The steady hum of the vacuum drew Dylan from his room as he stood, shoulder resting against the doorpost, watching her work.

“Mom would find all this hilarious.”

Jesse shut off the vacuum as she looked back at him. He wore an amused smile as he crunched on a mouthful of snack food

‘Hey, that’s for game night. Don’t eat it yet.”

He frowned as he set the bowl back on the kitchen counter.

“You’re really sounding like mom right now. Why is this so important to you? When we were kids we didn’t care what the house looked like when our friends came over. It was only ever mom who insisted we had to clean before we could have company.”

He was right. When she was younger she never understood their mother’s obsession with keeping the house clean for company. Now that she had her own home she understood the need to make things look “presentable.” Her home was a reflection of herself. If the place was messy she appeared messy and unkempt.

But if Dylan didn’t get that…?

_Does he not care about the apartment because it doesn’t feel like his home?_

When they had first moved in together she had asked his input on decorating the place. Had offered to set things up however he wanted. But each time he turned her down. Even in his own room he barely decorated.

Though she asked him over and again if he was sure he didn’t want anything more, each time he assured her it was fine.

_He can’t really be fine with it._

Before she could ask him again there was a knock at the door.

Everyone arrived at the same time, like they’d planned it before hand: Arish, Langston, Emily, and Min-Young.

“I brought the drinks,” Arish lifted up a container of candy liquor as he came into the room.

“Your home is so nice,” stated Min-Young as she took it all in.

“Is this the plant I bought for you?” Emily pointed to a plant behind the couch.

“Yeah.”

“You are really good at keeping plants alive. If it was with me it would have died a long time ago.”

Everyone got a bowl of snacks before taking a seat in the living room. Over the game small conversations started up as everyone caught up on their lives outside of work.

“Look at Schrodinger’s new sweater,” Langston showed Jesse his phone where a photo of his cat was displayed.

“Oh, he looks so handsome.”

“Can I see?”

Langston turned the phone to Min-Young as she gushed over his cat.

After that they set up their houses as Jesse noticed Min-Young put her houses on the board with the roof down. Seeing Jesse’s confused look she explained, “I don’t see colors so this helps me know which ones are mine.”

Her brow furrowed more as her confusion only deepened, “You don’t see color? Like, not at all.”

“You don’t know Min-Young’s story?” asked Arish.

She shook her head.

Min-Young smiled pleasantly as she said, “It happened my first day at the FBC.”

“Before you go on, can I ask how you got started at the FBC?”

“It really goes back to my mom. She was a seamstress, mostly worked on doing alterations to clothes. But she wanted more for me and so she did extra work to pay for my schooling so I could get a stable job. I went with accounting. But I wanted to do more than make my mom proud. I understood her wanting me to have a steady job that didn’t require long hours, but I wanted to do more than take care of myself. My mom did so much for me. I wanted to take care of her. And not just her.”

Jesse followed her brother with her eyes as he got up from the table. He headed over to the snack counter, though she’d noticed his bowl still had plenty of snacks in it.

“My mom is so loving. She do so much, not just for me, but for others. Though she sewed all day, when I was in middle school, she took time to sew costumes for the whole class. And she would make my Halloween costume every year.”

With his back to her Jesse wondered if all this talk of mother’s was reminding him of their own. Dylan had been close to their mother. Or it was more accurate to say they got along better than Jesse had.

Jesse had worn out her mother and Dylan had been her “good child.” Though at times the woman did find herself concerned for her son. Like when she found him dressing up in the nice dresses she’d purchased for Jesse, or playing with the dolls she’d bought for Jesse.

In the end the Faden siblings had really only had each other. Though family was something they would have liked to have, with parents who put an effort into getting to know them and not trying to box them into their perceptions on how they should act, at least they’d had each other. Some didn’t even have that. Like Emily.

Her eyes wandered towards the blonde as Min-Young told the group, “I just wish I had appreciated the effort she’d put into my costumes at the time.”

Their mother hadn’t put any effort into Halloween, not even to buy them costumes. She’d seen it as a waste of money and their father had agreed. Jesse still recalled digging through the dump on several cold October days to find something that could represent the final piece of her and Dylan’s costumes.

“I got a job with the government as an accountant. Through my work there I stumbled upon some files for a group that no one seemed to know anything about. Even my superiors at the time didn’t have any ideas about what the Federal Bureau of Control was. When I tracked them down Trench hired me on the spot. Said he could use someone with my “skill.”

Jesse hoped Dylan didn’t think these game nights were her way of trying to replace him. If anything she was hoping to expand his world. Her world. For over seventeen years he’d been the focus of her life, but now they were together again and she didn’t want it to stay just the two of them. That was too lonely and not all that healthy for either of them.

They both needed to expand their worlds, to let others in who could understand where they were coming from because they had also experienced strange things and wouldn’t judge them for being a little off.

Like Min-Young, with her color blindness.

“It was one of my first few days at the FBC, while I was still getting acclimated to all the weird stuff, I found one of those red reel master viewers. It was on my desk and I didn’t know about the objects moving. I thought someone had left it as a gift. I’d had one as a kid and wondered what pictures were inside. I started flipping rough and the images, the colors were so bright and vibrant I just kept flipping. The reds were the reddest I’d ever seen, the blues the bluest and when I reached the end and moved it away from my eyes I found the colors around me had completely faded away and I was left seeing nothing but shades of grey.”

‘Wow, that’s horrible.”

‘It was definitely life altering. Up till that point I’d never had anything strange happen in my life. Hadn’t encountered any AIs or been part of any AWEs like some of the other staff. But when that happened I realized I had encountered one of those life altering moments where you have to decide who you are going to be. I could either be someone who saw in gray scale, or someone who lived in gray scale. You know.”

Jesse nodded “Yeah. I think I do.”

“I could just be an accountant and could have color vision but go around living a mundane life, waking up, going to work, then going home to sleep before starting over again. But working at the FBC I may just be an accountant, but the work we do is important. We protect people and my job is to make sure we have the funds to do that.”

“Can we get back to the game?” Dylan sounded annoyed as he took his seat again.

They’d had a game night once a month for a while now and each time she’d thought Dylan was warming up to the group by the end, but by the next game night he was back to being cold and distant and acting like he didn’t like them at all. She hoped it at least was taking him less time to warm up again as she’d occasionally notice him smiling when Arish said something funny, or groaning playfully whenever Min-Young related something to one of her favorite shows.

The only one he still seemed to keep a distance from was Langston, but she was sure that was due to him being over the Panopticon where Dylan had been housed at the end of his time at the FBC.

By now Dylan would at least being throwing food at Arish, but perhaps today was an off day with all the reminders of their mother.

“Oh um, it’s my turn?” Jesse picked up the dice, rolling them before looking at the rest of the table, “Sheep, I’ve got sheep. Who needs sheep? Sheep for wood. Sheep for brick.”

Emily laughed as she held out a wood card for Jesse, “Why does it feel like you’re always calling out “sheep” when we play this game?”

Arish looked at her like he’d just realized something, “You’re right. It’s like you purposefully put your houses in areas where you’re guaranteed to get a bunch of them.”

Jesse bobbed her shoulders in a shrug, “What can I say, I like saying the word. Sheep! Sheep sheep sheep sheep.”

As the others laughed she noticed Dylan remain quiet as he sourly stared at his hand of cards.

_He’s not having fun._

This fact only increased with time as they went around the table. The next time it came around to Jesse’s turn again, she yet again offered the table sheep for other things.

“Sheep? You want sheep, I got sheep,” Jesse spread her large hand of sheep out onto the table.

“You better get rid of those before someone rolls a seven.”

“Hoarding all those sheep is not going to help you win the game,” stated Langston.

“But they’ll keep me warm,” she rubbed the cards against her face getting a laugh from Emily.

“I could use some sheep,” Emily held out some wood cards for Jesse.

“Oh my god, would you stop your ass kissing,” everyone looked at Dylan as his nostrils flared as he glared at Emily, “You’re not at work anymore. You don’t have to help her. She’s the dumb one who chose to focus only on sheep and doesn’t have any other resources.”

It only took a moment for Emily to recover as she assured him, “That’s not it at all. I have this port here that allows me to trade in three sheep for any resource, so it really helps me to give her the resources she needs for her excess sheep.”

Dylan snorted, “We both know you only put your house there because you knew she’d yet again put her home where she could get a lot of sheep. You’re not fooling anyone, Emily. Does it make your heart race every time your fingers brush as you exchange cards? Do you get some sick enjoyment out of helping Jesse out even as she blows up her own game?”

“Dylan, stop.”

His glare turned on his sister. It reminded her of the time when he’d been possessed by the Hiss as she felt her heart drop at the memory.

Slamming his hands down on the table he stood up before storming back to his room.

Jesse winced at the loud sound his door made as he slammed it. She took a moment before looking back at the rest of the table, her smile strained as she said, “It’s getting late.”

Emily nodded as she rose, “Yeah. It was a long day.”

As the others left Emily paused as she said, “I would offer to help clean up,” her eyes glanced past Jesse to Dylan’s door, “But I think you’d prefer to be alone.”

Jesse’s smile was grateful, “I’ll see you Monday.”

Emily returned the smile as she gave her hand a quick squeeze, “Have a good weekend.”

Then she was gone.

___

Jesse took some time cleaning up the snacks and board game before heading to Dylan’s door.

“Hey, Dylan, can we talk? It doesn’t have to be about what happened, but I just want you to know I’m here to listen to whatever you have to say.”

She didn’t even know if he was listening or if he had his headphones again. But she kept the door closed, not wanting to intrude on his space without an invitation.

“I want you to be happy. But I—I feel like you’re not.”

Her eyes drifted to the side as she took in their living space. There wasn’t a single item she could find that Dylan had picked out himself.

“I know you’ve had a lot happen to you, so it’s probably hard for you to find things to make you happy, but I want you to be. I want you to be able to find things that bring you joy. I want you to feel comfortable here, to feel like this is your house. To feel like this is *your* place, not just mine. I want this to be *our* place.”

It seemed like Dylan was not going to be opening up to her tonight. As she turned away she heard the door click as she turned back to find Dylan standing in the doorway, the hard look still on his face.

“How can I feel like this is my place when you keep inviting those people here?”

He was holding his hands at his sides, clenched into fists that shook with internalized anger.

“Those people?”

“Those people from the FBC. You act like they’re your friends or something, but they work for the place that locked me up.”

“I do too.”

“Yeah, but you’re not them. You’re not the one that locked me up.”

Her throat stung as she considered how wrong he was.

“They’re not either, Dylan. Emily worked under Darling, but she knew nothing about you and had no part in that. Arish worked security. I get Langston was in charge of the Panopticon…Do you…do you blame me for what happened to you?”

“Of course not.”

‘Why not, Dylan? If anyone is to blame for it I should be near the top of the list. When they took you away I did nothing to stop them.”

His finger played with the doorknob as he was unable to look at her, “For a few years I did blame you. I dreamed every night of you running away and leaving me with them. But you were just a kid too, Jesse. We were both just scared kids. Neither of us knew what to do in that situation. Our parents were gone. They’d never really been there for us in the way that we needed. Otherwise why would we have been playing in a junkyard trying to visit different worlds in hopes of finding something better than our lives?”

For a moment he looked at her before going back to watching his finger as he scratched at a glob of paint on his door, “No. I don’t blame you, Jesse. I know your life was just as miserable as mine. We both were trapped in our own ways. Trapped by the FBC.”

“I know, Dylan. I know. And it’s probably messed up that I’m working for them now, but I feel like I have to. As the director I have to make sure that no one else gets hurt like we did. Both with what happened in Ordinary and what happened afterwards.”

Slowly he took in a breath before letting it out again. “Yeah, I think I get that.” A smile came to his faced as he maintained eye contact with her, “you were always my hero, Jesse. When we played video games and I couldn’t defeat a boss, you were always the one who could. You were always stronger than me. Braver than me.”

“That’s not true.”

_If I were brave I wouldn’t have left you._

She couldn’t look at him now. Wouldn’t even look up as she heard him pad across the floor to stand in front of her.

“It *is* true. And it still is true. When the Hiss attacked me I let them. I gave in, but when they attacked you, you fought them. You didn’t give in. You weren’t just going to let them take over. Even when it seems hopeless you kept fighting.”

She watched his shoulders drop as he looked off to side as they both thought back to that time.

“I gave up long before the Hiss came. Long before they started whispering in my mind. In a way, they didn’t need to whisper in my ear, the words were already there. The worries, the fears. I’d had them all along. But when they spoke I listened to them. Let them in. let them dig deeper and deeper into the darkness.”

She stepped closer, touching his shoulder, “I want to do what I can to help you not fall back into that darkness. I want to help you in the ways I can. The ways I can’t I want to help you find the things that *can* help you.”

Dylan turned his head slowly as he looked at her, “I guess, right now, the thing that would help me is to, like you said, feel like this place is home.”

“I would like that. I’ve wanted to share a home with you for seventeen years. It’s all I’ve dreamed about in that time, reuniting with you and being together again. What would help this feel like home to you?”

“When you first asked me for help in decorating part of me was thinking it wouldn’t last. That there was no point in trying, but I would like to try this time. But…” he frowned as he looked down “I don’t know what things I like or don’t like. I guess that would be the first step—find out what I like.”

She beamed, “Yeah, that’s a great idea. Let’s find out what you like for decorating, Then we can find out what foods you like and the music you enjoy.”

Jesse could feel herself amping up with anticipation for all the things they could discover together. Dylan put a stop to it with a raised hand.

“Whoa, slow down. Let’s just start with my bedroom.”

‘Right. Start small.”

“Maybe even smaller, like, let’s start with sheets. Bedding. What sheet pattern would I like? Solid colors or a pattern. Do I like my blanket to have a sheet or comforter?”

He frowned as he noticed the way she was beaming, “Small, Jesse. We’re starting small.”

She laughed, “I know. I’m just…I’m glad we’re even starting.”

He smiled back, the tension completely gone from his shoulders, “Me too.”

____

Jesse looked up from her desk as Emily entered the room.

‘Hey.”

The blonde smiled back as she closed the door behind her, ‘Hey, uh, I wanted to ask you about game night. I know it’s not any of my business, but I thought I’d ask if everything turned out okay after we left. I hope I didn’t do anything to annoy him. I-I wasn’t kissing your ass, as he said. That’s just how I decided to play the game that time. It was a good trade agreement and--.”

Jesse smiled as she lifted her hand, seeing Emily would go on forever if she didn’t stop her, “It’s fine. It was kind of something deeper we talked over and are working out together.”

“Oh,” Emily looked relieved, “I’m glad things are looking up.”

“Me too,” Jesse started to feel that familiar excited energy run through her body as she stood up, “After work we’re going out together to pick out sheets for his bed.”

“Oh?” Emily looked amused though confused at why that would have Jesse so excited.

“We’re figuring out together what kinds of things he likes, but we’re starting small for now. Just the sheets.”

“That’s a good idea. It will give you both a chance to figure out things since you probably didn’t get much of a chance to find what you liked either.”

Jesse nodded.

_Emily really does understand me._

“I am looking forward to discovering myself through this as well. To find what food I like. What music. If we’re hardwood floor people or shag carpet.”

Emily smiled, “Sounds like an adventure. I’m glad you two are able to finally embark on it together.”

She returned the smile as she felt her chest swell with joy. She had her brother back and now everything she’d ever dreamed about could come true.

As she looked across the room at Emily she felt a different feeling grip her heart. A longing to invite Emily to join her on their adventure. But it was not time for that yet. Right now her heart and mind were focused on her brother and building their life together.

Later, in the future there would be time to expand their adventuring party. And when that time came she already had the new member in mind: a wizard with a penchant for knives.

_I just hope she’s still available when that time comes. Oh God, I hope she’s still available._


End file.
